On Campus

New ranking shows Top 200 universities for 29 subjects

See how Canadian schools measure up

University of Alberta (Photo by Chris Bolin)

There’s nothing quite like it. QS Intelligence Unit, a British firm, has released its first-ever world university rankings by subject. They offer the top 200 schools for an incredible 29 disciplines based on academic and employer reputation surveys and academic citations per faculty member.

The top five schools in each ranking are almost entirely British and American. Only two Canadian schools cracked the top 10: the University of Toronto for Environmental Sciences, Modern Languages and English and the University of British Columbia for English and Geography.*

But our schools didn’t flounder by any means. In fact, we have some exceptionally well-rounded institutions. Just look at the University of Alberta and McGill University, which ranked in all 29 categories.

Curiously, the highest ranked Canadian school is most often the University of Toronto, followed by the University of British Columbia and McGill University. Those are the same three schools that won gold, silver and bronze in the medical-doctoral category of the Maclean’s University Rankings.

Now for the Canadians results. Click here to see how our universities ranked for Pharmacy, Medicine, Chemistry, Physics, Earth and Marine Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Materials Science, Computer Sciences, Biological Sciences, Statistics, Mathematics and Engineering.

Click here to see where Canadian schools landed for Sociology, Psychology, Politics and International Studies, Philosophy, Modern Languages, Linguistics, Law, History, Geography, English, Economics and Econometrics, Accounting, Education and Communication and Media.

In case you’re curious, here are all the Canadian schools that made it into the Top 200 rankings. Beside each is the number of subject rankings (remember, there are 29 total) in which they placed.

University of Alberta 29
McGill University 29
Université de Montréal 28
University of British Columbia 28
University of Toronto 28
University of Calgary 24
Western University 21
McMaster University 19
Queen’s University 19
University of Waterloo 18
York University 16
Simon Fraser University 14
Université du Québec 13
Dalhousie University 12
University of Ottawa 10
Carleton University 9
University of Victoria 9
Laval University 7
Concordia University 6
University of Guelph 3
University of Saskatchewan 3
Ryerson University 2
University of Windsor 1

*Editor’s Note: The original post failed to recognize that UBC ranked in the top 10 for Geography. This has been corrected.

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